The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
A golfer can achieve better performance on the course when the golfer's clubs are well fitted to the height and stance of the golfer. However, current approaches for fitting golf clubs to players are crude. Players can buy pre-manufactured sets of golf clubs in which one club size is intended to fit all golfers. Alternatively, a player can opt for custom fitting.
One present approach for custom golf club fitting typically involves a player repeatedly gripping and test-swinging multiple different sample clubs until the player identifies a sample club that appears to fit. A drawback of this approach is that the seller of the golf clubs must maintain an inventory of sample clubs in a large range of sizes. The approach is also impractical for most retailers because a large amount of storage space is needed to store an inventory of clubs for custom fitting. When the approach is multiplied across many different golf club product lines, the number of clubs required for accurate fitting is too numerous and the cost is too large for a large number of retail locations to implement it.
The approach is also tedious for the golfer, who must repeatedly grip, try, and evaluate many different clubs having different parameters such as shaft length, head lie angle, shaft flexibility, etc.
Golf club vendors typically address some of these issues by holding periodic club fitting events. For example, a truck carrying the inventory of clubs visits a country club, golf store or other retail outlet for a short period of time. However, for the golfer this approach is inconvenient because the golfer may not learn about the fitting event until too late.
Further using the foregoing approach to accurately fit a golfer may require the golf club vendor to make up dozens of clubs that fit only a small percentage of golfers, thus wasting manufacturing resources.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,469,627 shows a golf club fitting apparatus that uses electrical contacts and sensors to detect the length and angle at which a golf club has held. However, the use of electrical contacts as described in the '627 patent is believed to provide inaccurate measurements. Further, the '627 patent uses a single fixed fitting club head 14 (FIG. 1). If a golfer prefers to use a golf club head of a different type (such as a two-ball putter head rather than a blade putter head), the golfer cannot accurately visualize how a custom-made club with that golfer's preferred head will actually look and feel.